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The IKN Weekly
Week 732, May 28th 2023
Contents
This Week: Corrigendum, In Today’s Edition, A word on recent trades and trade intentions,
But you said they wouldn’t hike again.
Fundamental Analysis: Marimaca Copper (MARI.to): Compelling copper economics.
Stocks to Follow: Marimaca Copper Corp (MARI.to), Equinox Gold (EQX), Amerigo Resources
(ARG.to), SolGold (SOLG.to) (SOLG.L), Orecap Invest Corp (OCI.v), Minera Alamos (MAI.v), QC
Copper & Gold (QCCU.v), Contango ORE (CTGO).
Copper Basket: Overview, copper market comment.
Producer Basket: Overview, Wesdome (WDO.to) (WDOFF)
TinyCaps Basket: Overview, Manitou Gold (MTU.v), Nine Mile Metals (NINE.cse).
Regional Politics: Ecuador: A brief update, Mexico: The lawsuits begin, Chile: Lithium
negotiations begin, Chile’s Environment Minister justifies the Los Bronces permit approval, Peru:
Copper production recovering, Colombia: The draft environmental law project.
Market Watching: Deferred.
I remind subscribers that no part of this newsletter can be copied, reproduced or
given to any third party without the express permission of the author.
This Week
Corrigendum
The Contango ORE (CTGO) second string project is not called Lucky Strike. You know that, I
knew that, we also know it’s real name is Lucky Shot and nothing to do with cigarettes
containing toasted tobacco. Apologies for the error.
In Today’s Edition
 Today’s main event is on Marimaca Copper (MARI.to). I’ve watched the company for
too long without doing what I should have done a long time ago, as from this week it’s
part of the Stocks to Follow Watch List and I expect to own some shares soon. Last
week’s MRE update was impressive, the Fundies section hopefully explains why.
 There are other things, of course. Always some of those.
A word on recent trades and trade intentions
I feel as though I may have been messing people around with my chronic procrastination on
lightening copper exposure (or not) and the “might do this” or “don’t be surprised if I sell X and
buy Y” statement in last week’s edition, especially as I executed on only one part of those
trades between then and now. So therefore, a few lines to be clear:
 I have lightened a little on Amerigo Resources (ARG.to), but this is a strict personal
portfolio decision and no reflection on that excellent and great value company stock. I
remain a massive fan and long.
 I have not yet bought my opening position in Equinox (EQX), but I plan to do so this
week. The funds are those raised from the ARG sale.
 I will sell Faraday copper if 1) the exit price isn’t too low (anything under 80c would be
1

too tough to swallow) and 2) copper shows weakness again. If not, I will rough it out
until FDY recovers. It will do.
Hope that’s clear, but if you want to complain in person about my crossed messages, or maybe
even the way I’m adding a new copper stock to the Watch List this week while selling other
shares, fell free to write in and tell me the things I need to know.
USA holidays and jobs
A brief reminder of Memorial Day tomorrow Monday in The USA, so along with other events and
happenings its stock markets are closed. Canada’s markets are open as usual, but as per
normal on days such as these it will run on low volumes.
After giving deserved and due honour to its military personnel who those who offered the
ultimate sacrifice, the USA then gets back to business and with concern over inflation waning,
the BLS Employment Report is back as the most important monthly date in the country’s macro
calendar. According to the inimitable Bill McBride and Calculated Risk (1), the consensus for the
May 2023 edition is for 180,000 Non-Farm Payroll jobs added and the headline unemployment
rate ratchets up a notch, to 3.5%.
But you said they wouldn’t hike again
So, no debt default. Probably a good thing, but even as the clock ticked down last week and
before Reps and Dems reached (what seems like) a deal, market sentiment wasn’t being driven
by any pending default disaster. Instead it’s back with inflation, which clearly isn’t done yet and
on that here’s the top bullet from FX Street, a Forex-centric site that does a good job of getting
to the point of macro data announcements (2):
Inflation in the US, as measured by the change in Personal Consumption Expenditures
(PCE) Price Index, rose to 4.4% on a yearly basis in April from 4.2% in March, the US
Bureau of Economic Analysis reported on Friday. This reading came in higher than the
market expectation of 3.9%.
While known as a noisy dataset, the headline number from “The Fed’s Favourite Indicator” was
a big over and the market reacted accordingly. Here’s CNBC (3) with some extra info and the
new assumptions being baked in:
 The core personal consumption expenditures price index rose 0.4% in April and 4.7% from a
year ago, both a touch higher than expected.
 Despite the higher inflation rate, consumer spending held up well as personal income
increased. Spending jumped 0.8% for the month, while personal income accelerated 0.4%.
 Immediately following the report, market pricing swung to a 56% chance that the Fed will
enact another quarter percentage point interest rate hike at the June meeting.
Before moving on, this desk knows it’s fashionable to dump on MSM bizmedia but that CNBC
report linked above does a very good job of summing up recent US macro news flow. It goes
on to list and note several of the minor pieces added to the jigsaw in the last few days,
including the way April durable goods order also put in an unexpected 1.1% increase, when
forecasts were for a 0.8% drop. Other things too, so if you want to get a useful round-up of the
data I’ve been staring at while writing today’s intro, hold your nose and click through here (3).
But gold is our focus and US macro is only
ever our backdrop, so we now move to the
reason we care, leaving it to others to
consider what all this means to NVDA’s
prospects or the USD price of Kraft
Mac’N’Cheese in your local supermarket. The
six-month chart (right) is a nice snapshot
because it takes in the start of the recent run
and while the latest dip to the Friday
U$1,944/oz close is lower than I’d like, not
2

going to play cute and say that the “revolving around U$2,000/oz” call did well last week as
gold dropped under the U$1,950/oz line, it’s difficult to complain too much about the way gold
acted last week in a market that came under a lot of pressure.
To consider the not-so-bad response from gold last week, we need to consider how we got
here and while we’ve run through the main drivers of gold in the last 12 months on several
occasions, such as in IKN721 dated March 12th 2023 and the intro note “The return of the most
unpopular gold rally ever”, it’s time for an update on the timeline. First we re-cap:
 We’ve had a big phase of Fed tightening, that started in April 2022 and became the driver of
financial matters, taking over from the shocks created by the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
That phase lasted until the start of November 2022 and dragged gold down to U$1,650/oz.
That move is “to the left” of the above price chart, now let’s comment on what we can see.
 To quote IKN721, “Then came the pivot point at the beginning of November when the Fed
hinted, then signalled, then confirmed it would slow its rate hike rhythm and as a result, gold
rebounded in good style.” Gold returned to U$1,950/oz and, if memory serves, pinged
U$2,000/oz intraday before running out of steam.
 The bullish gold period lasted until early February when, thanks to a combo of hot inflation
rates, a leery Fed communiqué and presser and then that blow-out +571k NFP jobs number
on the Friday of that same week (remember that one?), the “tightening fears” returned and
there was plenty of talk about even 50bps rises in the pipeline.
 That’s where we got to last time, now for the new stuff and the most recent rebound, which
began in the first week of March and arguably lasted for two months, triggered by those US
regional bank blow-ups as the market realized the Fed couldn’t merely tighten with gay
abandon without serious consequences for the economy. The classic Fear Trade took over, we
assumed the Fed would abandon its fight against inflation to avoid a hard landing, gold
regained the U$2k/oz level and peaked at over U$2,050/oz. All seemed fine with the world
and we even saw the metals miners catch a bid, until…
 The last two weeks. As noted above inflation is again seen as a threat, and with the Biden
administration joining the Fed in swearing blind that the banking system is robust and not
under systemic threat, we’re in a new world of Fed raises. As always there are caveats, and
aside the way the latent threat posed by the US Debt Ceiling seems to have passed (I kind of
knew that if I wrote on it as per last week the issue would disappear…), the USD rally and
resulting gold weakness we’ve seen in the last two weeks is understandable, given the Fed’s
new position (maybe new-new-new-new position?) next to the larger recession narrative.
And that’s where we are today. The market is newly concerned about inflation, the Fed
considers it has room to raise rates without blowing up any more banks, the recession scenario
is being slowly baked in and without the systemic
threat to the USD, the world is duly running to its safe
haven of choice (which is now paying up to 6% in T-
Bills, my stars how’s that for baking in inflationary
prospects?). The USD index (DXY) added just over a
percentage point this week and in normal style (12
month chart right), gold did its “anti-dollar” thing, with
GLD dropping 1.48% on the week.
With Fed hikes now being priced back into the
equation, there’s a certain amount of Groundhog Day
feeling about the current market and that implies the
reasons to own gold haven’t suddenly disappeared.
Instead they’ve been shuffled to the back of the financial queue again as the cycle looks to take
another turn. Under such circumstances, by far the smartest move is to hold pat and hold gold.
3

Fundamental Analysis of Mining Stocks
Marimaca Copper (MARI.to): Compelling copper economics
Maury Ballstein: What do we do when we fall off the horse?
Derek Zoolander: [mouths words silently] Fall off the horse...
Maury Ballstein: We get back on!
Derek Zoolander: Sorry Maury, I'm not a gymnast.
Zoolander, 2001
Preamble
Copper has dropped from its U$4.00/lb + levels in recent days, the sector experiencing a sell-
off that began in April… as soon as the world’s hedge funds and instos were heavily net long.
Meanwhile, your author has been chewing his fingernails for several weeks as the concern
about the near-term market for copper we first voiced in IKN728 dated April 30th (intro and
extended Copper Basket notes that day) has become the unfortunate reality. And after some
costly procrastination I even did something about it last week, selling a small part of the
Amerigo Resources (ARG.to) position and lightening the portfolio copper exposure a little.
It’s with that backdrop that today, we present Marimaca Copper and its compelling project
economics. As well as the inspirational words of Maury Ballstein, of course.
Your author deferred comment on Marimaca Copper Corp (MARI.to) in IKN731 and for what it’s
worth, the low-level household bug has been stubborn and is still hanging around us (ten
days…getting a little boring). That was the excuse not to published last weekend when the
MARI.to updated Mineral Resource Estimate (MRE) numbers, announced on May 18th (8), were
still fresh out the oven. However, the NR certainly deserved more time than the limited amount
I would have given it last weekend as, despite it being a new copper project analysis in this
publication at a time when you may be sick of hearing about the metal, the story and project
economics that the new resource model offer have become nothing short of compelling.
So the idea is to skate to where the puck is going to be and start with the standard top-box
showing corporate structure. Then come few brief words on a project you probably know about
already (so keeping that short), then the number-crunching. We begin.
Shares out: 88.226m
Options: 7.381m
Warrants: Zero
RSUs: 0.411m
Fully diluted: 96.018m
Current share price: C$3.65
Market Cap: C$322.02m
Approx cash per S/O: 0.11c
All prices are in Unites State Dollars unless stated. Forex U$0.75=CAD$1
Just one note to add to the above table, as a little over 3m of those options are priced at
C$5.00 and there are another 200k or so priced in the $4s. The rest in the money (or missing a
couple of pennies and considered ITM). Also, please note that today’s default currency is the US
Dollar, unless otherwise stated (I think it’s just the share prices that see Canadian Dollar signs).
Management and shareholders
MARI benefited from a share rollback a few years ago which helps explain the tight share
structure, made even tighter by the two biggest holders of the stock, insto sector investment
houses Greenstone Resources LP (28.92% of shares out and a long-standing investor in MARI,
right back to its Coro Mining days), then Tembo Capital Mining with 11.53% of shares out.
The management team is led up by President and CEO Hayden Locke and the board has deep
mining experience along with some A-list mining names, such as Coro founder Alan Stephens
and Clvive Newall of First Quantum fame. At this point we should note that collectively, the
4

board owns 360,123 shares of MARI and that would normally be a weak point in a junior story,
however this lack of ostensible alignment with shareholders is mitigated to a great extent by
having Michael Haworth as company chair. He holds zero share personally, but he’s the co-
founder of Greenstone and as such, will be keen to assure the best deal possible for equity in
this company.
Marimaca project history and location
The quick and dirty on how MARI got here: The company has a long history of exploration and
development in the Americas, chiefly in Argentina and Chile and under its previous corporate
name, Coro Mining, it developed the San Jorge copper project in the province of Mendoza and
all was well there until the provincial government placed a de facto ban on mining
development. From there Coro pivoted to its Chilean assets and developed on several fronts,
including the Marimaca deposit first discovered (or announced so) in 2016. To cut a long story
short, as Marimaca developed and became the company’s flagship project, its other assets were
sold to third parties, then the name change and 100% focus on the Marimaca project began in
2020. Since then the company has made excellent progress and is now at the point where it
expects to begin work on a Definitive Feasibility Study at the end of this year, which implies
delivery of the DFS in mid to late 2024.
Marimaca is located in the Antofagasta Province of
North Chile (Region II). The map (right) from the
2022 43-101 report shows its location and gives an
idea of its proximity to everything a mine needs. A
largely coastal desert zone, Marimaca is low
altitude, very little flora and fauna and no local
communities living nearby. In a country where
ecology issues and environmental concerns have
become a sensitive issue under the new
government (though even those are now waning),
Marimaca could not be better located. Water supply
is covered, as MARI has a signed agreement for
recycled seawater supply with the relevant Chilean
authorities. Power lines are located close by and
connection would be straightforward. Finally and as
implied by that little map, workforce is plentiful and
skilled in the zone, as this is true mining country
and the population depends greatly on mining for
wealth creation.
Financials overview
Before we get to the reason we’re here, a quick look at the main MARI tracking charts to show
where the company stands financially today. Assets and liabilities are modest, considering its
longevity. MARI has traditionally expensed its exploration costs though that may change if the
company has plans for developing Marimaca itself. Liabilities are at an absolute minimum these
days, that’s optimum.
MARI.to: Liabilities per qtr
40
35
30
25
20
15
10
5
0
5
91q4 02q1 02q2 02q3 02q4 12q1 12q2 12q3 12q4 22q1 22q2 22q3 22q4 32q1
MARI.to: Assets, per qtr U$m
LT liabs
current liabs
source: company filings
724.74 349.95 239.25 956.35
266.55
984.75 547.95 128.06
2.45
967.86 332.67 901.76 953.56 901.76
110
100
90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
91q4 02q1 02q2 02q3 02q4 12q1 12q2 12q3 12q4 22q1 22q2 22q3 22q4 32q1
U$m
fixed
other current
cash
source: company filings

Over time, MARI has sold off other assets to add to its treasury position, most recently the
Rayrock asset in Chile (once part of its flagship project before Marimaca took over). That and
an obvious keen eye on keeping down unnecessary burn and directing as much of its cash into
the ground (with drillers often paid in shares) means it has done well and preserved cash
without having to dilute the share count by much.
MARI.to: Working Capital per qtr
50
40
30
20
10
0
-10
-20
-30
With U$12.2m in the bank and working cap of U$16.3m as at end 1q23, MARI has all it needs
to get through this year and begin the DFS compilation process, as well as drill out the project
and go drilling for those deeper sulphides
(that may add an extra layer of value to the
company at some point). I doubt it would
be able to get through the whole of 2024,
however, so at some point MARI will need
to find treasury cash from somewhere and
they may end up running a share
placement. Not easy to guess how those
chips fall at this point in 2q23, however.
The share count hasn’t budged much for
two years, it has another year in the tank if
so required.
As for the day-to-day, you can see by the
op-ex tracker that when MARI is drilling it burns maybe $5m/quarter, when it isn’t drilling it
keeps a tight lid on costs. Overall, MARI runs a neat and tidy financial ship. If it’s not bought
out by a third party beforehand, the company will probably have to go to market and raise
some more working capital in 2024 but its robust share price and strong reputation, along with
insto backers with the type of pockets one would require, means they won’t be short of options.
However and for 2023 I expect no great changes to those good-looking tracking charts.
The Marimaca resource
So far so good and MARI.to has a good team, good backing and a good location. Now for the
main course and the reason for today’s look at the company, its updated MRE as published on
May 18th. the first thing to note is that Marimaca to date is a copper oxide deposit, even though
the company has recently started to put a few drill holes into the deeper sulphides they expect
to find (and we’ll start getting assay results on those soon) and to get to the point, here’s a
simple sentence:
Copper oxide deposits make for good open pit heap leach operations.
That’s one for today and for future reference. Copper oxide deposits are typically cheap to mine
in the basic scoop/truck/crush/dump way (and often the “crush” isn’t needed) and extraction
isn’t much more than “sprinkle dilute sulphuric acid, collect pregnant solution.” When it comes
to mining simple is good and the characteristics of Marimaca, with a low projected strip rate
and easily mined rock in an optimum location, it’s as simple as they come. We don’t yet have
the full 43-101 report as MARI has 45 days to file that to SEDAR but last week’s NR was a long
6
91q4 02q1 02q2 02q3 02q4 12q1 12q2 12q3 12q4 22q1 22q2 22q3 22q4 32q1
U$m MARI.to Shares Out
source company filings
853.46 853.46 853.46 853.46
146.37
737.78 39.78 39.78 820.88 811.88 622.88 622.88 622.88 622.88
110
100
90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
91q4 02q1 02q2 02q3 02q4 12q1 12q2 12q3 12q4 22q1 22q2 22q3 22q4 32q1
U$m
source: company filings
MARI.to: Operating expenses
8
6
4
2
0
-2
-4
12q1 12q2 12q3 12q4 22q1 22q2 22q3 22q4 32q1
share based comp U$m
salaries/mgmt
other corp
legal
DD&A
Exploration
source: company filings

one with plenty of relevant information and, as it builds on the MRE published in 4q22, there’s a
decent level of reliability about the numbers today. Here’s the main resource table from the NR,
you get notes below:
1) MARI uses a baseline copper price of U$4.00/lb, which may seem high at first sight but it’s
chosen to create the Whittle Pit shell, rather than the need to boost project economics. We’ll go
into this in some detail further down.
2) The most important line is that of the 0.15% cut off grade for total contained copper (CuT).
Then MARI also offers as guidance the higher cut off of 0.22% CuT to give an idea of how the
project hangs together at higher assumed costs (answer, very well). For most of our
calculations today, we’ll be using the lower 0.15% CuT cut-off assumption and at that level, it
assumes mining costs of just over U$10/mt. That’s reasonable for this type of deposit in this
location.
3) A word on “CuT” versus “CuS”. Typically with copper oxide deposits you are offered these
tow numbers, with “CuT” an estimate of the total contained copper and “CuS” the “soluble”
copper, i.e. the copper that’s going to be easily recovered. The CuS grade is useful to know and
provides a baseline, but for our purposes today we are going to run with the same assumptions
MARI has used to date in its published literature and its third party 43-101 reports. In those,
they use the CuT grade then assume a 76% recovery of that total. For what it’s worth, in
conversation this week with MARI CEI Locke I was told that the company expects to recover up
to 80% of CuT once the mine moves from the drawing board and into reality, as the extensive
metallurgical studies done on the Marimaca rock (and they are ongoing, with more coming in
conjunction with the DFS) show they will likely get more than the baseline 76%. You will note
below that we too prefer to use 76% for our economic calculations on Marimaca, preferring as
always to err on the side of caution, but it’s nice to have a potential 4% extra production in the
back pocket.
4) We return to the above table. Note the separate sections on Measured, Indicated, then their
total in Measured + Indicated (M+I) resource, finally the separate inferred resources. Today we
care mostly about the total M+I and the inferred. Do the math on the new MRE from last week
and you get the following copper from Marimaca:
 M+I contained copper (CuT): 198.7M lbs
 Inferred contained copper (CuT): 31.2M lbs
 Total contained copper (CuT): 230.0M lbs
 M+I recoverable copper (76% of CuT): 151.0M lbs
 Inferred recoverable copper(76% of CuT): 23.7M lbs
 Total recoverable copper (CuT): 174.7M lbs
So, two sets of numbers, both using CuT and the second set assuming 76% recovery to give a
better estimate of the total potential production from the Marimaca project, start to finish. This
new 43-101 MRE compares very favourably to the most recent update, from October last year
and in the following table, you can see what has changed at the 0.15% CuT cut-off:
7

MARI.to: Marimaca recoverable copper resource at 0.15% CuT cut-off
Year M+I inferred total M+I inferred M+I Cu inferred tot.43-101
MRE tonnes tonnes tonnes CuT % CuT% Mlbs CuMlb CuMlb
2022 139,567 82,678 222,245 0.48 0.39 112.2 54.0 166.3
2023 200,312 37,289 237,601 0.45 0.38 151.0 23.7 174.7
difference 60,745 -45,389 15,356 -0.03 -0.01 38.8 -30.3 8.5
source: MARI data, IKN calcs
 The big difference is that MARI has improved the M+I tonnage substantially, adding new
confidence to the deposit and as we’ll see in the next section, done a great job in defining
the best understood near-surface zone that’s begging to become a high-grade starter pit that
will offer exceptional early project economics and quick capital payback. So, M+I tonnes are
up 60,745mt to 200,312mt and while inferred tonnages have dropped as expected as they
move up the reliability scale, MARI has found and added more new resource and the grand
total of M+I+I (we can add them together, the company cannot under CIMM 43-101 rules) is
15,356mt more than before.
 As for grade, that’s dropped slightly (0.03% in the M+I, 0.01% in inferred) but that’s still a
very decent result, it’s what happens as a deposit increases in size. The main event here is
the 0.45% CuT M+I grade, which at a 0.15% CuT cut-off already implies robust economics
for the eventual mine.
 So to the most important boxes and please remember, the above table is predicated on the
recoverable copper, i.e. 76% of the total CuT. The new 2023 total for recoverable copper
comes in at 151M lbs M+I, plus 23.7M lbs inferred for a global total of 174.7M lbs. That’s
8.5M lbs more than the 2022 MRE and that’s an excellent result, as it}’s uncommon for a
project to see a large improvement in resource category and improve its overall metals
numbers at the same time.
Before we move on, this table does the same job but at the higher 0.22% CuT cut-off. Again it
shows that MARI has improved on all metrics aside the grade, with a lot of rock converted into
M+I, better overall tonnes, better overall copper pounds.
MARI.to: Marimaca recoverable copper resource at 0.22% CuT cut-off
Year M+I inferred total M+I inferred M+I Cu inferred tot.43-101
MRE tonnes tonnes tonnes CuT % CuT% Mlbs CuMlb CuMlb
2022 113,517 60431 173,948 0.54 0.47 102.7 47.6 150.3
2023 154,900 27200 182,100 0.53 0.45 137.6 20.5 158.1
difference 41,383 -33,231 8,152 -0.01 -0.02 34.8 -27.1 7.8
source: MARI data, IKN calcs
So far so good, with an improved resource and more copper to mine, produce and sell to the
world from Marimaca. All this had improved my outlook on the company and its stock even
before getting to the sections maps included in last week’s NR. Then things got even better.
This visual (right) shows the long section with approximate dimensions of the entire deposit,
with resource category mapped in
the upper and Cut grade in the
lower. Not only is the high-grade.
Near surface zone immediately
apparent, with pink/rose/purple
zones of high grade rock gathered in
one general area, but the drill work
done there means nearly all of its is
M+I (in fact, it’s mostly measured)
and only a minor amount is left in
the inferred category.
Even without the detail we’re bound
to get in the upcoming 43-101
8

report, that’s a significant improvement on the previous MRE and so I started playing with the
visual. Here’s my first scratched-out effort, including a proposed “start pit” shell and some basic
guesses on the overall tonnages and grades we could get from the zone.
Here’s a close-up of the same sketch, for your consideration:
As you can see above, my ciggypack assumptions of a zone that averaged 750m long X 120m
deep X 200m wide (other maps and charts helped for that last one), then a wild guess on grade
as seen above, got me to a “starter pit” containing 44.7m tonnes of 0.6% CuT and as soon as
you run the basic math on that, you get impressive margins per tonne:
0.6% copper at 76% recovery and U$4.00/lb = U$40.21 recoverable metal value
As for costs, MARI will bring detailed numbers to the table when
the DFS appears, most likely in 2024, but for the time being it
has benchmarked its assumed costs to local established copper
oxide mines in Chile and here (right) are the basic parameters
table from the 2022 43-101, all these remained unchanged in last
week’s NR:
If we assume the higher SX/EW processing cost rather than the
minor Run Of Mine they show as an alternative for a small
amount of the lower grade material, it adds up to U$7.69/tonne.
That’s U$40.21 in metal per tonne, with a production cost of U$7.69/t. Yup, that’ll do.
When what seems like reliable project economics on an advanced and evermore reliable deposit
come out this robust, the first reaction is “seems to good to be true” so to remedy that, I
decided to ping CEO Hayden Locke and ask him where I had gone wrong. I literally sent him
that sketched out visual you see above, along with my simplified production assumptions and
asked, “Are you going to build a starter pit here?” and “If you do, what’s bad about these
numbers?”, expected a list of corrections. Instead I got a reply that started with these words:
“In my view, that is pretty much phases 1-3 of the pit. There is a little bit of mining in
the other phases during that period, but that nails it.”
MARI was indeed going to build that starter pit and the pit walls were basically where I’d
guessed, so the tonnage was close to the company’s internal assumptions as well. All very good
and now MARI had my full and undivided attention. Then followed some back and forth
between his desk and mine and once done, I had enough to build the ballpark production
model you see below. The only meaningful change to my original guesstimates was on grade
9

for the starter pit, which I’d guessed at 0.6% and the company believes should come in at
0.7%, even better! CEO Locke suggested that 80% recoveries may be the eventual number but
agreed that for the sake of conservatism, 76% was a better input at this stage. We then picked
over the specific gravity assumption and while there’s a case for using 2.63X due to the rock
types they’re going to mine in the early phases, the original 2.65X guess is close enough and I
decided to keep that as stands.
Now armed with plenty of reasonable ballpark input assumptions, it was time to build a model.
After consulting with CEO Locke and making reasonable assumptions thereof, here are the
annual projected average grades and tonnage throughputs for Marimaca over its current 16
year projected mine life for oxides, plus two end years of remnant production.
We model the early “starter pit” stage at a steady state 0.7% CuT and 25,000tpd, with year
including some ramp-up. As from year 7 grade drops and levels out at 0.4% CuT (internal
company guidance) and throughput increases to 50,000tpd, then the oxides enter depletion
stage in year 15 when the lowest grade remaining rock is processed. Please note that if you do
the math and add up the total tonnage processed in our model it comes to 222.5 million metric
tonnes (mmt), slightly less than the current 43-101 M+I+I total of 237.6mmt. This allows for
some inferred being lefty un-mined and is also another way of baking some conservatism into
the model.
We then apply an across-the-board 76% recovery assumption to all years, which brings us this
as a projected copper production. For what it’s worth, I’ve added the production bars in grey to
show what things would be like at 80% recoveries, just for fun.
Marimaca: Projected copper production, per year
10
1.28
6.201 6.201 6.201 6.201 6.201 6.201 6.501
3.711 3.711 3.711 3.711 3.711 3.711
6.85 6.85
7.11 9.5
Marimaca: Projected avg Cu grade, per year
Mlbs
140
120
100
80
60
40
20
0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18
source: company data, IKN ests and calcs
The first “starter pit” years average a little under 50,000 tonnes of copper cathode production
per year (NB not concentrate, MARI is expected to deliver a premium product that suffers from
lower middleman deductions), a little over 50kmt/annum during its mature phase when
tonnages increase and grade drops. This assumption fits in closely with the company’s own
vision (I know because I asked them) and also please note that under the new Chilean royalty
laws, annual production of under 50,000kmt will not pay the royalty so Marimaca will be almost
totally unaffected by the new rules.
Marimaca is set to produce a high quality cathode and for that, buyers pay top dollar with less
vig for the middleman. Here’s how the model projects the type of annual copper production in
the above chart as gross revenues, using four different copper prices from a U$3.00/lb “stress
%07.0 %07.0 %07.0 %07.0 %07.0 %07.0
%05.0 %54.0 %04.0 %04.0 %04.0 %04.0 %04.0 %04.0
%02.0 %02.0 %02.0 %02.0
% CuT tpd Marimaca: Projected avg TPD, per year
0.8% 60000
0.7% 50000
0.6%
40000
0.5%
0.4% 30000
0.3% 20000
0.2%
0.1% 10000
0.0% 0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 101112131415161718 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 101112131415161718
source: company data, IKN ests source: company data, IKN ests

test” to a bonanza U$4.450/lb average over mine life:
U$m Marimaca: Projected gross mining revenues at various avg Cu prices,
600 per year
At U$3.00/lb
500 At U$3.50/lb
At U$4.00/lb
At U$4.50/lb
400
300
200
100
0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18
source: IKN calcs and ests from company data
Now that’s quite a busy chart and not the easiest to read, but you can probably make out that
at U$4.00/lb copper MARI pulls as little over U$410m per year in its “starter pit” period, which
then rises to U$469m per year in the mature period.
Also notable is the cash generated at U$3.50/lb, with U$359m per year in the “starter pit”
period and $410m in mature period. This is the first indication that the U$4.00/lb base case
price assumption used in the MARI literature to date is more about constructing the Whittle Pit
shell and less about a baseline price it requires to be profitable. Indeed as we’ll see, MARI
works well at prices as low as U$3.00/lb.
So to costs and first, we consider capex. This next chart begins with the MARI house
assumption, as stated by CEO Locke both to your author and in recent webinars and interviews,
MARI can build its mine for “under U$500m”. That would be reasonably cheap for this size of
mine in the 2020’s, no matter where you are but again, the prime location, easy access to
required infrastructure and the simple metrics and technology of the mine and its plan mean it
is a reasonable assumption to make. Therefore we are going to assume Marimaca costs exactly
U$500m to build, with three years’ worth of U$150m spends (though that may be done in just
two years) and a final U$50m in capex as the mine ramps into Year One of production. We then
make rounded assumptions for sustaining capital in any given year, with the only difference
being the period around year 7 in which MAERI would need to get out its chequebooks again as
that expand the mine into its mature 50,000tpd period.
Marimaca: Capex/Sust Capex assumptions, per year
11
051 051 051
05
02 02 02 02
07
021
03 03 03 03 03 03 03
02 02
01
5
U$m
160
140
120
100
80
60
40
20
0
-2 -1 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18
source: IKN ests from MARI data
Now for op-ex and this chart uses the MARI U$7.69/tonne as a baseline, assumes Year 1 will
cost around $10/t but then the other years run at U$8/t, those costs including mining,
processing and G&A. The lower throughput of the starter pit period means opex is kept as low
as U$70m per year, that climbing to U$140/year once the machine is running at 50,000tpd.
Marimaca: Projected mine costs, per year
07 07 07 07 07 07
89
211
041 041 041 041 041 041 041 041
82 41
U$m
160
140
120
100
80
60
40
20
0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18
source: company data, IKN ests and calcs

For those of you who think these costs assumptions are too low, I though so too at first. For
sure its impossible to predict accurately a year’s worth of mining costs 15 years into the future,
but the current MARI assumptions have plenty of baseline comparative operations in Chile and
even in the most expensive LatAm country for manual labour, it’s a lot cheaper than in North
America. Then please consider that the Marimaca oxide deposit will run on a near 1:1 strip ratio
for its entire mine life, that means considerably less waste movement over LoM. Overall, the
above assumption is reasonable, in my opinion.
Which means we can subtract one from the other and reach a projection for Mine Operating
Income per year at our four average copper price assumptions. That chart goes like this:
U$m Marimaca: Projected Mine Operating Income at three avg Cu prices,
per year
450 margin at U$3.00
400 margin at U$3.50
350 margin at U$4.00
300 margin at U$4.50
250
200
150
100
50
0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18
source: IKN ests and calcs
Again, not my best chart ever but you can probably make out this:
 At U$3.00/lb Cu average, the starter pit period MOI is around U$238m per year and the
mature phase is around U$212m per year
 At U$3.50/lb Cu average, the starter pit period MOI is around U$289m per year and the
mature phase is around U$270m per year
 At U$4.00/lb Cu average, the starter pit period MOI is around U$340m per year and the
mature phase is around U$329m per year
 At U$4.50/lb Cu average, the starter pit period MOI is around U$392m per year and the
mature phase is around U$388m per year
To remind readership, that is Mine Operating earnings, taking into account mining costs and
G&A. In order to show part of the data in a different and perhaps clearer way, this chart takes
the U$4.00/lb copper average price and lays out the gross revenues and the MOI for each year:
Marimaca: Gross mining revenues and MOI
at U$4.00/lb avg Cu, per year
12
4.823
4.852
5.014
5.043
5.014
5.043
5.014
5.043
5.014
5.043
5.014
5.043
5.014
5.213
2.224
2.013
1.964
1.923
1.964
1.923
1.964
1.923
1.964
1.923
1.964
1.923
1.964
1.923
550
At U$4.00/lb
500
margin at U$4.00
450
400
350
300
250
200
150
100
50
0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14
source: IKN ests and calcs
Or if you prefer, we can run those copper price assumption on a total mine life basis:
 At U$3.00/lb Cu average, total mine life MOI is U$3.134Bn
 At U$3.50/lb Cu average, total mine life MOI is U$3.955Bn
 At U$4.00/lb Cu average, total mine life MOI is U$4.776Bn
 At U$4.50/lb Cu average, total mine life MOI is U$5.597Bn
I don’t know about you, but I think that’s a serious amount of wealth generating potential for a
stock currently priced at C$322m market cap, or around U$242m in Bidendollars. This isn’t

some early stage exploration punt either, it’s a deposit and a company that’s done plenty of
work and is now moving into the period the DFS gets compiled, in theory the stage before the
project gets financed and put into construction/production. The deposit is understood, the
location is optimum, the presumed capex bill would be small compared to most copper projects
and the time is approaching when the world will be desperate for new sources of copper metal,
if the Transition narrative is to be believed. This seems very cheap considering where it is on
the development track, where it is on the planet and where it is compared to market
projections.
Or if you prefer, here’s how capex, opex, revenues and returns combine in an accumulative
manner:
Cumulative returns at various avg Cu prices over Life of Mine
U$m
5000
4500
4000 At U$3.00/lb
3500 At U$3.50/lb
3000 At U$4.00/lb
2500 At U$4.50/lb
2000
1500
1000
500
0
-500
-1000 source: IKN ests and calcs
-2 -1 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18
We assume it take three years from construction decision to production, then in less than two
years, capex gets paid back at U$4.00/lb. Even if copper drops to U$3.00/lb average, capex
payback happens after year three of production. After that, it all depends on your average
copper price but with serious cash flow annually, there will be no problem in making the
sustaining capex and throughput upgrade bills as grade drops and the mine expands.
Discussion and conclusion
With MARI now entering DFS compilation phase, at some point it will begind to re-rate as the
market begins to price in either a) that the company will raise the required financing and build
Marimaca itself or b) will come under offer from the highest bidder. The most likely outcome is
to be bought out eventually by a third party with operating experience, perhaps a company of
the size of Capstone or HudBay, but if so this desk0s assumption is that the bids won’t arrive
(or more saliently, be accepted) until the DFS is either with us or about to be published. That’s
going to take another year and a half, which gives us our first time window to consider MARI as
a trade vehicle.
As for a share price target we could put on the company today, either as a developer of
Marimaca itself or as an acquisition in M&A activity, I’m seriously loathe even to hazard a guess
at this stage because, as the model above hopefully frames, it’s all going to depend on the price
of copper. The Marimaca project has obvious advantages, not leats that due to the low initial
expected capex and immediate cash flow from that high grade starter zone, it’s always going to
be a defensive asset and one that can support periods of lower copper prices if necessary.
However, when it comes to pricing the equity there’s a vast difference between assuming a
U$3.50/lb copper price, giving it a target of 20% NAV and assuming 90m shares out when it
sells (target C$8.10) and seeing bidders line up when copper blows through U$4.50/lb and
seeing the company sell for 30% Marimaca NAV at that copper price (target C$20). What I do
know, however, is this:
 MARI is worth far more than its current share price today
 Its project economics are compelling. Even if costs rise sharply and copper goes
through a price trough, this oxide heapleacher will remain profitable and if the good
times for copper roll in the way all and sundry are predicting for the second half of this
13

decade and the 2030’s this is going to be a license to print money. Forget about that
U$4.00/lb number they use in their literature and 43-101s, this has sparkling project
economics.
 This mine is going to get built. It’s advanced enough to put it into the next tier of
development stories, it’s coming to fruition at the right time and it couldn’t be in a
better location.
 We probably have a window of buying
opportunity this year, 2023, as at some
point the world will realize that this
company will either sell to the highest
bidder or it will build a mine that will allow
it to churn out $300m in annual profits for
15 years
Therefore, as fro this week Marimaca Copper
(MARI.to) is part of the Stocks to Watch list, this
weekend in the Watch List but as the note below
will show, I’m likely to open a position sooner
rather than later.
Stocks to Follow
If it weren’t for the Friday afternoon dumpage of Minera Alamos (MAI.v) it wouldn’t have been
such a bad week, but that brutal ending to the Top Pick’s week took a large lump from my
(virtual) net wealth and stung. The chart (see below) suggests it was a one-off and I’ll be
looking to its 1q23 filings for the rebound it richly deserves.
But it was a negative week for mining stocks of all sizes and in our list just four of the 18 stocks
from this time last week managed to return gains (SOLG.to, QCCU.v, FDY.to, ATC.v). Two
others were unchanged (NCAU.v, MIRL.cse) and all the others were losers, including big drops
in Ore Cap (OCI.v down 30.0%), Mene (MENE.v down 11.6%), Goldshore (GSGHR.v down
11.1%), Minera Alamos (MAI.v down 10.0%), Contango (CTGO down 9.8%) and Equinox (EQX
down 8.8%). Fortunately, most of those are either on the Watch Kist or very small personal
holdings. Except for MAI.v of course. Grrrr.
We’ve now added Marimaca Copper (MARI.to) to the Watch List and while I have plans on
buying, Equinox (EQX) is still in that part of the table. That means 19 open positions with 13 of
them owned personally, one below the self-imposed maximum. Just six in the green.
company Ticker this week Avg Price Reco date Current PPS Gain/Loss% Notes
TOP PICKS
Minera Alamos MAI.v STR BUY C$0.21 13-Oct-19 C$0.315 50.0% $0.75 first tgt, #1 idea
RECOMMENDED STOCKS
Amerigo Res ARG.to STR BUY C$1.36 12-Dec-21 C$1.48 8.8% Main Cu trade, top fundies
SolGold SOLG.to STR BUY C$0.265 19-Feb-23 C$0.275 3.8% Cu in Ecuador, M&A tgt
QC Copper&Gold QCCU.v SPEC BUY C$0.265 25-Apr-21 C$0.155 -41.5% MRE due June 23
Faraday Copper FDY.to may sell C$0.79 26-Mar-23 C$0.78 -1.3% Latest Cu exploreco, IKN723
AbraSilver Res. ABRA.v BUY C$0.36 4-Dec-22 C$0.31 -13.9% added for last time Mar'23
Western Explor. WEX.v BUY C$1.87 9-Apr-23 C$1.59 -15.0% Au spec in NV USA
Newcore Gold NCAU.v SPEC BUY C$0.205 23-Oct-22 C$0.17 -17.1% MRE better than it looked.
Rio2 Ltd. RIO.v SPEC BUY C$0.83 22-Apr-18 C$0.20 -75.9% Cheap on permit probs, appeal
14

SPECULATIVE TRADES
Orecap inv OCI.v SPEC BUY C$0.04 20-Nov-22 C$0.035 -12.5% corp revamp, new strategy
Aldebaran Res. ALDE.v Hold C$0.72 16-May-21 C$0.69 -4.2% now in drill assay season
Minera IRL MIRL.cse avoid C$0.195 22-Jul-12 C$0.035 -82.1% run into ground byCEO, AVOID
A WATCHLIST OF POTENTIAL TRADES. NB: I DO NOT OWN
Equinox Gold EQX WATCH/BUY U$5.34 15-May-23 U$4.47 -16.3% Likely purchase soon
Marimaca Copper MARI.to WATCH C$3.65 26-May-23 C$3.65 0.0% Likely purchase soon
ATAC Res ATC.v HOLD C$0.095 11-Sep-22 C$0.145 52.6% now under offer, will not trade
Rugby Resources RUG.v WATCH C$0.06 26-Mar-23 C$0.06 0.0% new on watchlist, Cu in Col
Goldshore Res GSHR.v WATCH C$0.165 26-Mar-23 C$0.20 21.2% return to list, possible flip
Contango Ore CTGO WATCH U$23.25 2-Dec-22 U$25.31 8.9% Manh Choh finance now closed
LONG-TERM NON-MINING HOLD
Mene Inc. MENE.v adding C$0.63 6-Dec-20 C$0.305 -51.6% LT bet, adding slowly
CLOSED TRADES IN 2023 date closed close price
Altiplano Metals APN.v jan'23 C$0.31 17-Sep-21 C$0.17 -45.2% delayed and will dilute soon
Western Copper WRN.to mar'23 C$2.02 13-Nov-22 C$2.32 14.9% sold on reduced M&A prob.
Chesapeake Gold CKG.v may'23 C$3.07 20-Feb-22 C$1.75 -43.0% Closing on legal action news
Amerigo Res ARG.to may'23 C$1.36 12-Dec-21 C$1.48 8.8% sold 20% to raise cash
2015 to 2022 annual closed positions in appendices below, 2009 to 2014 closed positions in editions IKN553 or earlier
Now for notes on some of the covered companies:
Marimaca Copper Corp (MARI.to): ADDED TO WATCH LIST. Today’s main note above,
it’s on the Watch Kist this weekend and perhaps for a few more, but given the right timing and
entry point I expect to become an owner of a few of these soon.
Equinox Gold (EQX): LOOKING TO BUY THIS WEEK. The plan was to sell some ARG and
buy EQX with the proceeds. As things turned out, I did sell a few aRG (and probably way too
cheaply) but the was EQX just kept on dropping and dropping last week put me off the buy
button. To its credit the stock rebounded on Friday along with peers in that small relief rally,
but I was too chicken by then and decided to
wait at least this weekend. The plan was to buy
a few and play the potential gold bounce, that’s
still the plan and I’m looking to buy into some
this week. It won’t be many as I’m still not
mega-flush with cash, but a plan is a plan.
Meanwhile and to add to the thoughts laid out in
the last few weeks on EQX (from IKN728
onward), here’s another chart that shows the
leverage this stock tends to offer compared to
both gold and the GDX. That’s the high cash cost
15

profile for you, but with Greenstone coming online and gold recovering, that current under-
performance to peers may soon flip again. It looks cheap and you’re getting plenty of gold
upside.
Amerigo Resources (ARG.to): SOLD APPROX 20% OF HOLDING TO RAISE CASH. I
know I may live to regret it, but it was an overly large position and the easiest way of raising
some cash in a hurry (without selling those Faraday (FDY.to) shares way too cheaply, anyway).
SolGold (SOLG.to) (SOLG.L): Canada is the
secondary of SOLG’s two listings and more volume
runs through its main London AIM listing, but it so
happens that we follow SOLG in Loonies and the chart
from the last two weeks shows that after its recent
improvement in traded volumes, Canadian SOLG has
gone quiet again.
Orecap Invest Corp (OCI.v): After the early flush
that came with the name and ticker change, OCI is
back to where ORK was trading beforehand. I like this
at 4c, so 3.5c looks particularly cheap for bargain
hunters.
Minera Alamos (MAI.v): Ugh, what a nasty way to close the week. I’ve featured MAI in
comparative with GDXJ (again) because it’s not the
first time in recent weeks that I’ve pointed out its
“market perform” trading characteristics. That
continued right up until Friday, when some-or-other
desk dumped over half a million shares onto a
nervous juniors market in the afternoon and turned
what was shaping into an UNCH week into to 10%
loss since IKN731. That’s a nasty paper loss and,
believe it or not, the lowest close since the rebound
from the Covid trough and April 22nd, 2020.
As misery loves company I pinged company
President Doug Ramshaw this weekend, who told
me that the company 1q23 financials will be filed in
good order on Tuesday evening (the limit date). He is looking to give shareholders a corporate
update at the same time.
QC Copper & Gold (QCCU.v): Glass half empty or glass half full?
We’re now approaching a full year of this tight, overly low and rather boring trading range in
QCCU and it’s up to you to decide whether that’s a net benefit or not, but this week QCCU
squeezed out a positive week when all around failed and drooped.
16

As May becomes June I’ll chase up company CEO Stephen Stewart for confirmation that the
long-awaited Mineral Resource Estimate (MRE) update is going to show as promised in 2q23.
That means next month and it was always going to be the third of the three months in Q2. It’s
high time this stock offered us a true catalyst and showed the world it has a real mine on its
hands, not just an interesting theory.
Contango ORE (CTGO): The main feature last weekend in IKN731 and down 9.8% this week
but the most important part of this ten-day price
chart is in the bottom-right, the scale. The
trading on Monday and Tuesday make look
rough at first sight and the overall drop on the
week was sharp in percentage terms, but we
need to compare the small absolute size of these
traded to the overall market cap at CTGO (it’s a
U$193m market capper this weekend) and its
fully funded status for the Manh Choh project.
You can be certain that the serious, long-term
money backing this company cares not about its
weekly fluctuations. However, that same money
would have been heartened to learn that as from
the next quarter CTGO will be part of the Russell
2000 index in the USA.
We remind readers that CTGO’s Rick Van Alphabet is appearing on a live webinar this coming
Tuesday, May 30th at 1pm ET. Here’s the link to go register (5) and here’s a repeat of the
blurb:
Join our President & CEO, Rick Van Nieuwenhuyse, for an in-depth discussion
regarding the news-heavy month we've had! Participate live and ask questions while
he details all our latest results and what they mean for Contango ORE going forward!
As they say in Australia, See You Next Tuesday .
The Copper Basket
After twenty-one weeks of 2023, The Copper Basket shows a loss of 6.02% to level stakes:
company ticker price 1/1/23 Shares out Market Cap current pps gain/loss%
1 Solaris Res SLS.to 6.44 114.56 651.85 5.69 -11.6%
2 Marimaca Cop MARI.to 3.22 88.226 322.02 3.65 13.4%
3 Western Copper WRN.to 2.41 151.597 315.32 2.08 -13.7%
4 Arizona Sonoran ASCU.to 1.92 105.96 180.13 1.70 -11.5%
5 Oroco Res OCO.v 0.91 213.438 160.08 0.75 -17.6%
6 Faraday Copper FDY.to 0.54 175.2 136.66 0.78 44.4%
7 Aldebaran Res. ALDE.v 0.78 153.96 106.23 0.69 -11.5%
8 Hot Chili HCH.v 0.78 119.455 103.93 0.87 11.5%
9 Regulus Res. REG.v 1.10 124.509 98.36 0.79 -28.2%
10 Pan Global Res PGZ.v 0.46 212.145 74.25 0.35 -23.9%
11 Kodiak Copper KDK.v 1.12 56.2 41.03 0.73 -34.8%
12 QC Copper QCCU.v 0.165 162.815 25.24 0.155 -6.1%
13 Element 29 Res ECU.v 0.16 86.966 16.52 0.19 18.8%
14 Libero Copper LBC.v 0.155 93.869 10.79 0.115 -25.8%
15 Atacama Copper ACOP.v 0.16 34.373 5.84 0.17 6.3%
NB: All stocks in CAD$ Portfolio avg -6.02%
17

Another tough week to be a copper bull. Just two of our 15 stocks managed to eke out gains
(FDY.to, QCCU.v) and five others remained unchanged (PGZ.v, REG.v, ECU.v, LBC.v, ACOP.v)
with a notable common trait; all of those are from the smaller market cap end of the list.
Meanwhile the losses in the larger and/or more liquid junior copper names came across the
board and exemplified in our eight week-over-week losers (SLS.to, WRN.to, MARI.to, OCO.v,
ASCU.to, ALDE.v, HCH.v, KDK.v). However and notably, there were no double figure
percentage moves in either direction and the worst losers were our top three in the market cap
league table, namely Marimaca (MARI.to down 8.8%), Western (WRN.to down 6.7%) and
Solaris (SLS.to down 6.3%).
The Copper Basket 2023, weekly evolution
12%
Once again and as usual, the juniors’ equity
10%
process were largely driven by the moves in its 8%
6%
underlying metal and copper took a big enough
4%
hit to make business headlines last week. Your 2%
author last weekend was sweating on the 0%
-2%
U$3.70/lb line and trying to justify his stubborn
-4%
reluctance to sell down exposure and lighten -6%
the portfolio. That thin hope lasted a day and -8%
when spot dumped to under U$3.60/lb
midweek, bottoming around U$3.55/lb, it was
time to act and I made the first move and sold
the small tranche of Amerigo (ARG.to) as noted above. I would have sold Faraday (FDY.to) as
well if it weren’t for the price dump, the strong feeling that I’d be selling at the very bottom
more prosaically, the market for
shares dried up almost completely.
Even a modest new seller such as I
would have pressured the market
price lower and that would have
been the supreme insult.
It was, therefore, a great relief to
see copper rallying into the US long
weekend, its action a mirror image
to The Fear Trade of gold as hope
rose that a deal on that crazy US
debt ceiling could be reached in
time. Once the dust had settled
copper’s wild rollercoaster ride on
the week had brought it back to
where it was last weekend, but this
time its price is in the ascendancy.
But will the rally continue? Last week saw a plenty of opinion on the airwaves and most of it
was bearish, such as this Bloomie note (6) entitled “Hedge Funds Bet Against Copper for First
Time in Three Years” and including this chart (right) and these words (below):
LME data this week showed investment
fund positioning in copper flipped to a
net short — the first since June 2020,
after bearish bets surged since mid-
April and long positions have been
unwound. The metal, viewed as an
economic bellwether for its use across
sectors from construction to electronics,
has been under mounting pressure
after official data pointed to weak
demand from the world’s top consumer.
The notable rise of spec shorts was picked
up by Reuters, too (7):
18
ts1naJ ht8naJ ht51 dn22 ht92 ht5bef ht21 ht91 ht62 ht5raM ht21 ht91 ht62 dn2rpA ht9 ht61 dr32 ht03 ht7yam ht41 ts12 ht82
source: IKN calcs

Speculators have amassed their biggest short positions in U.S. copper futures in 10
months as China’s economic recovery falls short of expectations and rising interest
rates slow growth in other countries, weakening demand for metal.
However, it occurred to this desk that these speculators and insto funds now in big net shor(see
that above chart again). With the copper short position now at record levels, is there a whiplash
effect in the works? Saxo Bank’s Ole Hansen thinks there may be, or at least the worst of the
selling is done:
A key area of technical support for copper around $7,800-$7,900 has held and prices
should now stabilise, said Saxo Bank analyst Ole Hansen.
“We’ve hit a significant level of support. We’ve priced in a lot of bad news. This makes
me wonder whether there is much more selling left in the market,” he said.
Like many analysts, Hansen believes the copper deficits will soon emerge to lift prices.
One of the reasons used by bears to justify their short positions is the way LME inventories
have “almost doubled” in recent weeks. Here’s another segment of the Bloomie note:
Instead, Chinese demand has been a let down, while supplies are showing signs of
loosening — stockpiles on the LME increased every day for five straight weeks. The
effect has been stark: fund short interest on the exchange is near the highest on record
in data going back to 2018, while long bets have been slashed to the lowest in seven
months.
However and as we track in a careful way in our weekly inventories section (below), the rise in
LME stocks has been countered by the drop in SHFE stocks and what’s more, an arb between
those two systems is a normal seasonal dynamic. There’s no real reason to take LME in
isolation, not in our interconnected world.
The other issue affecting copper prices at present is the reported slack demand in China. We
saw the economic stimulus come through at the same time as the end of “Covid Zero” in
November last year and the result was record China’s producer output in February, but the
narrative these days is that the stimulus spike is over and now the new rise of Covid cases and
generalized inertia is back on the mainland. Which has me thinking about this data, out last
week:
If fuel demand rocketed in April, how does that sit with a stagnant economy. Here’s some
excerpts from the text that accompanies that table (8):
China's apparent oil demand topped 16 million barrels per day in April, setting a new
all-time-high just a month after it broke through the 15 million b/d mark for the first time.
The surge came as refiners took advantage of healthy domestic refining margins,
which have been bolstered by imports of cheap Russian crude feedstock.
China's oil demand rose by 5% from March to 16.06 million b/d in April, Energy
Intelligence calculates, based on its refinery throughput and net imports of 11 refined
products.
April demand also showed an increase of 26.1% over April 2022, when demand
crashed amid a strict two-month Covid-19 lockdown in Shanghai — a city of 25 million
people.
So the data is partly due to seasonal factors and the YoY comparative is not the best,
19

but we’re still up from March. As for the type of fuel:
All eyes are now focused on diesel — which is regarded as a barometer of industrial
activity — and on jet fuel.
China's industrial production has disappointed observers, falling 5.7% in April versus
March, and more than offsetting cumulative gains in the first quarter, according to
analysts at JP Morgan.
However, domestic demand for diesel in April still rose by 7.1% from March.
There’s something amiss here. We have a China projecting an image of things going wrong and
ill people closing down cities, we also have a China importing record quantities of hydrocarbons,
with highest demand for the fuels required by industry. It’s not the first time I’ve posed the
question and it also applies to iron ore, another bulk metal that’s seen a sharp price drop on
world markets. But we again consider the lot of China, the country that uses 55% of all the
copper used in the whole world and, unlike many other industrial metals, obliged to import
most of it.
Would China like copper prices to be higher, or lower?
True for iron ore, too. And if China would like Fe and Cu lower, any ideas on how it could go
about convincing the world that demand had suddenly slackened? We move to our regular
weekly segment on copper inventories, data from Cochilco:
 The aggregate for world copper stocks in the three official systems dropped by 10,522
metric tonnes (mt) on the week, to close at 211,611mt aggregate. We again saw arb
between the two main players.
 At the SHFE, stocks dropped by 5,798mt, with Friday’s total at 86,177mt and the
drawdown, earlier than in normal years, continues. Also, if we ignore the 2022 action
we’re at what is normally a bottom for SHFE stocks. June and July will inform on the
state of real demand.
 At the LME, 5,750mt was added to total stocks and for the second week running,
there’s a close correlation between what left SHFE and what arrived at LME, especially
as 4,500mt of the total was a
single arrival in South Korea. LME: 12 months of Cu tonnage under cancelled warrant
100000
Unlikely to be a coincidence. Stocks 90000
80000
now stand at 97,725mt in LME
70000
warehouses. Meanwhile, we had 60000
50000
the first uptick in cancelled 40000
warrants for a while, with 8,150mt 30000
20000
now set to leave. Here’s the 10000
0
tracking chart for that dataset
showing the last 12 months, last
week’s move is small but in the
right direction.
 Comex copper stocks barely moved, but managed to keep up its re-stocking sequence
by rising a razor thin 62 metric tonnes on the week to close at 27,709mt. No biggie.
The dedicated SHFE charts tell us it’s showtime on stocks in China.
20
ht42 ht8 dn22 ht5nuj ht91 dr3yluj ht71 ts13 ht41 ht82 ht11 ht52 ht9 dr32 ht6von ht02 ht4ced ht81 3202
naJ
ht51 02ts1naJ ht21 ht62 ht21 ht62 ht9 dr32 ht7yaM ts12
mt Cu
source: LME/Cochilco
SHFE copper inventory levels, 2018 to 2023
400000
350000
300000
250000
200000
150000
100000
50000
0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 01 11 21 31 41 51 61 71 81 91 02 12 22 32 42 52 62 72 82 92 03 13 23 33 43 53 63 73 83 93 04 14 24 34 44 54 64 74 84 94 05 15 25
MT Cu 2023
2022
2021
2020
2019
2018
source: Cochilco data

Shanghai Futures Exchange Warehouse Stocks, 2014 to date
400000
350000
300000
250000
200000
150000
100000
50000
0
21
31'13ceD dr32 ht51 ht7 ht03 dn22 ht71 ht9 ts1von ht42 ht71 ht01 dn2tcO 7102ts1naJ ht62 ht81 ht01 dr3ced ht52 102ht72rpa ht91 ht11 9102
dr3bef
102ht82rpa ts12 ht31 0202ht5naj 202ht92ram ts12 ht31 0202ht6ced ht82 dr32 ht51 ht7 202ht03naj ht42 ht71 ht9 3202
naJ
ht62
Mt Cu
|
source: Cochilco
No notes this week, I can’t think of anything useful to say.
The Producer Basket
After 21 weeks of 2023, the Producer Basket shows a gain of 6.07% to level stakes:
company ticker price 1/1/23 Shares out MktCap(U$Bn) current pps gain/loss%
1 Newmont NEM 47.20 799 32.50 40.68 -13.8%
2 Barrick GOLD 17.18 1761.54 29.93 16.99 -1.1%
3 Agnico Eagle AEM 51.99 488.9 24.94 51.01 -1.9%
4 Wheaton PM WPM 39.08 451.963 20.18 44.65 14.3%
5 Kinross Gold KGC 4.09 1256.1 5.95 4.74 15.9%
6 Alamos Gold AGI 10.11 393.1 4.87 12.38 22.5%
7 B2Gold BTG 3.57 1074.567 4.04 3.76 5.3%
8 Hecla Mining GFI 5.56 610.491 3.23 5.29 -4.9%
9 Eldorado Gold EGO 8.36 185.73 1.89 10.19 21.9%
10 Wesdome Gold WDOFF 5.53 147.526 0.84 5.67 2.5%
All prices and stock quotes in U$ Port. avg 6.07%
We’ve been trailing the GDX benchmark all year and the deficit has been nearly 3% at times
and we’re still behind this weekend, but now it’s down to just 0.04% as we did “less worse”
than the 5.4% lost by the ETF on the week. Not that our list of carefully selected precious
metals mining companies were sparkling successes though, all ten were losers with the worst of
the lot the 11.3% lost by Wesdome (WDOFF), but aside that one it paid to have smaller caps
on the list as the main damage was taken by the Tier 1 names such as Newmont (NEM down
6.8%) or Wheaton (WPM down 7.1%). There are now four red scars on the table above,
including the top three names.
The 2023 Producer Basket: Weekly performance and
comparative to GDX control
30%
25%
20%
15%
10%
5%
0%
-5%
-10%
ts1naJ ht8naJ ht51 dn22 ht92 ht5bef ht21 ht91 ht62 ht5raM ht21 ht91 ht62 dn2rpA ht9 ht61 dr32 ht03 ht7yam ht41 ts12 ht82
The 2023 Producer Basket: Percentage difference
between GDX benchmark & basket (negative = IKN ahead)
4.0%
ikn 3.5%
gdx control 3.0%
2.5%
2.0%
1.5%
1.0%
0.5%
0.0%
source: NYSE, IKN calcs ts1naJ ht8naJ ht51 dn22 ht92 ht5bef ht21 ht91 ht62 ht5raM ht21 ht91 ht62 dn2rpA ht9 ht61 dr32 ht03 ht7yam ht41 ts12 ht82
source: IKN calcs, NYSE data

Wesdome Gold (WDOFF): Post-close on Tuesday, WDO announced (10) results of area
drilling around Kiena that has identified near-surface low-ish grade mineralization that, at some
point, might supplement feed from the underground operations. The news is of secondary
importance to the company and Kiena’s well-being still depends greatly on the company
delivering on its timeline to access the lower levels of very high grade. However, WDO dumped
harder than any of its peers last week, so was the NR a liquidity event?
Well maybe a bit, but not really. It’s more about a speculative bump that the stock put in two
Fridays ago that duly unwound. Over the two weeks, WDO is below the GDX benchmark, but
it’s not a disaster drop either.
The TinyCaps List
After 21 weeks of 2023, the TinyCaps show a gain of 14.36% to level stakes:
company ticker price 1/1/23 Shares out Mkt Cap current pps gain/loss%
Aurelius Min AUL.v 0.07 49.787 1.00 0.02 -71.4%
Coast Copper COCO.v 0.045 64.001 2.88 0.045 0.0%
District Metals DMX.v 0.075 86.891 8.69 0.10 33.3%
Latin Metals LMS.v 0.13 69.962 10.14 0.145 11.5%
Manitou Gold MTU.v 0.02 344.568 18.95 0.055 175.0%
Nine Mile Metals NINE.cse 0.29 57.025 7.41 0.13 -55.2%
Palamina Corp PA.v 0.08 65.285 7.18 0.11 75.0%
Precipitate Gold PRG.v 0.075 130.367 7.17 0.055 -26.7%
South Star STS.v 0.55 32.755 19.98 0.61 10.9%
Viva Gold VAU.v 0.14 91.608 16.49 0.18 28.6%
Prices in CAD$, data from TSXV basket avg 14.36%
This section attempts to track the tinycap mining sub-sector of the market, our ten companies
chosen under the following criteria to put together a list representing the state of play in the
sub-sector of tinycap exploration company stocks. At least, that’s the plan.
 Market capitalization of under $20m. They have to be tiny. In two cases I’ve stretched the window a
little and allowed sub-U$20m market capper in that are just over the C$20m level, but the spirit is unaltered.
 A “non broken” stock price and project story. There are literally hundreds of tinycap juniors of the right
size, but it was a particularly depressing exercise to trawl through the whole of the TSXV and find companies
that are small enough, but with life in them. The vast majority of sub-$20m stocks are broken stocks, either
traded to death on the exchange or with projects that are a bust or with entrenched management more
interested in their monthly paycheck than anything else.
 Likelihood of meaningful newsflow in 2023. This connects to the company’s “unbroken” status, as we
want news and potential catalysts from companies with projects that can work.
 Decent management if possible. When you are down among the little guys it doesn’t pay to be too
choosy, but still I preferred companies that have teams or people with good peer reputations.
22

Four stocks remained unchanged on the week
(AUL.v, DMX.v, PRG.v, VAU.v), including Aurelius TinyCaps, 2023 weekly tracker
50%
which remained unchanged because it’s now under 45%
40%
Cease Trade Order (CTO) due to a lxck of financial
35%
filings. As cardinal sins in junior world go, it’s a 30%
25%
biggie. Meanwhile, just one stock improved on the
20%
week, South Star (STS.v) up 13.0% and that’s a 15%
10%
good performance in a tough market. Which leaves
5%
five stocks as week-over-week losers (COCO.v, 0%
LMS.v, MTU.v, NINE.cse, PA.v), including the big
dump in Nine Mile Metals (NINE.cse down 45.8%)
and there’s more on that below.
Manitou Gold (MTU.v): And that’s a wrap. We may still get some minor moves in the MTU
price as remnant shares change hands in the next few weeks, but the news on May 24th (11)
that Alamos (AGI) had closed on its purchase of MTU means this particular line item is now set
for a big 2023 win and will bolster our final percentage score nicely.
Nine Mile Metals (NINE.cse): Your tinycap implosion of the week.
Buried in a long, corporate update type NR out Thursday morning (12) was a line or three
about the latest five drill holes into its VMS system, totalling 727m, which finally got to the point
at the end of the paragraph:
“Assays have been received; however, the Au values were sub economic.”
The reaction can be seen in the chart, above. There was plenty more to read in the NR,
including a planned pause in exploration activities while the spring thaw gets done and the
plans for its next set of drill holes in a different corner of the concession, which I invite you to
read at your leisure. NINE closed at 13c after hitting a low of 10c, I expect that low will be
challenged again.
NB: Please be clear that The Tiny Dogs is NOT a list of recommended tinycap stocks. It is a list of companies with
market caps of under $20m offering a reasonable representation of the wider tinycaps market. It’s possible in the future
I may buy shares in one or several of these stocks, at the moment both my opinion and wallet are strictly neutral.
Regional politics
Ecuador: A brief update
We’ve done a lot (ugh) of Ecuador in recent editions, we’ll keep this update tight and stick to
the way the field is now positioning for the upcoming Presidential and Congressional election,
called as a result of President Guillermo Lasso’s decision to invoke the “Muerte Cruzada” clause
of the Constitution. Some bullet points and we’re done for a couple of weeks:
 We still have no fixed date for the election, though it’s now almost certain to be August
20th, with a second round run-off in October if required.
23
ts1naJ ht8naJ ht51 dn22 ht92 ht5bef ht21 ht91 ht62 ht5raM ht21 ht91 ht62 dn2rpA ht9 ht61 dr32 ht03 ht7yam ht41 ts12 ht82
source: IKN calcs, TSX data

 Despite originally saying to foreign press (the WSJ, if memory serves) that he would not
stand, President Lasso quickly walked that back (see IKN731) and the latest is that he will
make a decision “in the next two days”. He’s also scheduled to fly to The USA this weekend
for private reasons (to a hospital for surgery, apparently) and will be away for a week.
 But before leaving, Lasso used his executive powers to sign into law one of his pet projects,
establishing 10 Free Trade Zones in the country. Part of his larger strategy, to show Ecuador
that without the pesky obstructive Assembly (Congress) he’d be able to offer them all a
bright free market future. Never mind that he’s running an 88% disapproval rating, he thinks
he’s in with a chance.
 Meanwhile, the country’s electoral body has been running around trying to organize things
as one key step happened when ruling (13) that political parties have the period May 25th to
June 7th to run primaries and decide on their candidate for the upcoming Presidential
election.
 At this point, political analysts and commentators expect there to be eight candidates on the
eventual ballot, though that may turn out to be slightly more or less.
 Whoever gets the nomination in the Rafael Correa controlled UNES alliance (with his specific
party being the RC “Citizen’s Revolution/Revolución Ciudadana” party) is going to be
favourite for the vote, or at the very least guaranteed a place in the second round run-off.
At this point there are apparently three in the running, namely the previous candidate
Andrés Arauz, his Veep on the losing ticket in 2021 Carlos Rabascal and Congresswoman
Luisa González.
 To the right, a lot depends on whether Lasso decides to run or not. As for the ecology left,
ex Candidate Yaku Pérez has confirmed his intention to run but this time, he won’t have the
backing of CONAIE and the Pachakutik party machinery.
 Regarding CONAIE and the Pachakutik, there’s a growing call to see its current leader
Leonidas Iza become the official candidate and he hasn’t rejected the idea, but if it happens
he wants one of his own close allies to take over as the of the Pachakutik party.
The bottom line: We’ll have a better idea of the field and what to expect from a snap campaign
that should last for two months in a couple of weeks’ time. As for then mining world, there’s still
a lot of uncertainty about what to expect and while the lack of street protests or violence after
Lasso’s invocation of Muerte Cruzada is welcome, it also means a couple of months in which
nothing much will happen.
Mexico: The lawsuits begin
We followed the passage and eventual watering-down of the Mexico mining law reform fairly
closely on these pages and the last time it got mentioned, in IKN dated April 30th in the note
“Mexico’s mining law sails through the upper house”, I added this at the end almost as an
afterthought:
“…if all else fails, there will also be the inevitable raft of lawsuits from
companies who refuse to pay and cite the country’s Constitution as their
defence.”
It didn’t take long. Here’s LatAm environmental site Mongabay reporting on what it has
received as information from the environmental NGO “Change It Now Collective” (Colectiva
Cambiémosla Ya) (14):
Members of Change It Now Collective have alerted on the attempt by members of
Congress from different political parties to nullify the Mining Law reform, which will
result in a case sent to the Supreme Court. Members of the Collective have called on
members of Congress to respect the changes to the law that, they say, are step toward
“the construction of a legal framework to guarantee rights and in closer agreement with
a commitment to protect the environment.”
In other words, we didn’t even need to wait for the mining companies to open law suits against
24

this new law, they’re getting their members of Congreso to do it for them.
Chile: Lithium negotiations
To begin and semi-related, please consider this the first paragraph of the op-ed published in
Foreign Policy on Friday entitled How Chile’s Politics Are Shaping the Global Energy Transition
(15):
Chilean politics swung back to the pro-free market right this month, with voters electing
conservatives to dominate the assembly that will draft the country’s first new
constitution since 1980. The stakes are high in Chile’s rightward lurch for everything
from the economy to crime to abortion rights. The political pendulum swings will also
have big implications for the global clean energy transition given Chile’s role as a
dominant supplier of lithium, a crucial component of batteries for electric vehicles and
renewable energy storage systems.
The article continues and is mostly about Chile’s lithium market, but the above is applicable to
all types of FDI considering the country as its destination, classic hard rock mining for copper,
gold etc very much included.
Next, we note that Chile’s State mining company Codelco is not hanging around when it comes
to getting in on the lithium sector, as mandated by President Boric last month in that speech
which announced what the rest of the world thought as rampant left wing nationalization. Last
week set up two subsidiary companies to work in the lithium sector as majority JV partners with
foreign capitals, now this Friday it began official negotiations with SQM to enter as into JV with
the company at the Salar de Atacama. Codelco’s president, Máximo Pacheco, announced
Thursday the negotiations would begin and on Friday that happened (all surprisingly fast for the
normally staid State run company). He sat down with SQM managing director Ricardo Ramos
SQM for the first in many round table negotiations and while it’s going to take time to hammer
out all the details, we know that SQM is open to a deal and that Chile’s position is clear. In the
words of president Pacheco, “We have a very clear condition, and it is that Codelco will enter
into this association and will be a part of this joint venture in a majority control position.” He
also held a brief presser once this first meeting had concluded, saying, “We have defined the
main issues that we must agree upon and we have also agreed to have regular private
meetings, because this is an extraordinarily complex negotiation.”
Codelco’s Pacheco also opened up the prospect of immediate growth of Chile’s lithium sector
last week, when announcing that exploration results from the Maricunga Salar in the Atacama
region will be delivered to the company by the end of May (i.e. this coming week). The project
stage Maricunga Salar is smaller and has less concentration of lithium than the currently mined
Atacama Salar, but it’s widely understood as the next project to come on line and with the
upcoming report, Chile/Codelco will have a strong card to play in negotiations with SQM
Albemarle and any other private capitals company looking to get its share of the country’s
lithium market. We should also note that the Maricunga Salar is close to the Rio2 Fenix project
(you literally look down on the salt flat from the Fenix site) and the increased industrialization
of the region can only be of benefit for our permit challenged project as it awaits its appeals
hearing, likely in July.
Chile’s Environment Minister justifies the Los Bronces permit approval
Maisa Rojas is Chile’s Minister of the Environment, one of Gabriel Boric’s inner circle of ministers
from the Left wing and also chairs the “Committee of Minister” (Comité de Ministros), the body
that hears appeals on rejected permits and recently approved on appeal the Anglo American
Los Bronces expansion. A left wing academia and an qualified expert on all matters climate
change, Ms Rojas was one of the Left’s star appointments and, as we noted in June and July
last year when the Rio2 Fenix project saw its permit application rejected, is one of the direct
reasons Chile suddenly started rejecting permits for new projects after Boric was sworn in.
Therefore, it’s no surprise to learn that she came in for a lot of flak from her environmentally
aware political base* when, under her chairpersonship, Los Bronces was approved last month.
With Boric’s substantial loss of political power and the shift back to the right in recent times, it
was Rojas task to take a bullet, manifest the government’s forced change of line and approve a
25

project that the hard Left would prefer not to happen, but economic and political realities
demand otherwise.
Last week, Minister Rojas gave her first media interview since the Anglo permit appeal to Chile’s
national business newspaper, Diario Financiero and while other subjects were covered, it was
her answers to questions on Los Bronces that stand out. Here are links to a screenshot of the of
the whole interview (16) (17), here’s a translation of what matters:
Does this decision affect the declaration of an Ecological Government that this
administration proposed?
It’s important to realize that an ecological government does not interfere with the
approval or rejection of any given project. For us, the ecological government means
that the environmental, nature and the understanding of the (climate) crisis is central to
our decisions for the development of the country. And this isn’t something restricted to
the Ministry of the Environment, instead it’s across the board (as a policy). One
example is the Framework law of Climate Change, which 17 ministries signed as a
mandate of the legislation, which means they are all obliged to respect the law.
Chile is in a situation that nobody can deny, this is because for a long time the
development of the country has been associated with extracting value direct from
nature and this has caused environmental degradation. A transition (period) is needed
to change this, something that is explicit in the framework law.
Therefore, the Los Bronces (permit) approval happened due to transition
scenario?
We are in a process that doesn’t happen overnight, in which Chile can change its
extractivist development model to one in which development is a condition of care and
restoration of the environment. In the case of mining, this is an activity that causes
environmental impact, mining without impact does not exist. What we have to do here
is to have an honest dialogue about how much impact we are willing to accept, and
raise those standards so that (the impact) is minimized. But until that conversation
takes place, the decisions have to be made from the current existing laws and in this
particular case (Los Bronces), the Environmental Evaluation Service (SEA) during the
appeals period considered that the company had remedied the reasons why the
project had been rejected previously. It therefore was up to us to take the decision (to
approve the project).
Please excuse my use of “extractivist” in the translation, there’s no better way of doing it.
Anyway, it only took the first line of her first answer, “…an ecological government does not
interfere with the approval or rejection of any given project…” for this interview to have my full
attention because there is no way you would have seen that in print in 2022. There’s also a
sense of a reporter who has been told what (and how) to ask, the first question opening the
door wide for Rojas to defend her ecological position while justifying the Los Bronces. This
interview is clearly designed to appease the vociferous critics on the left of the stage, but it’s
also a window on the change in policy in the Boric government, now obliged to enact pro-
economy policies and make excuses to its hardcore support. As for the upcoming appeal on
Fenix, again to be chaired by Mr Rojas, please note her words in the second answer, “…until
that conversation takes place, the decisions have to be made from the current existing laws.” In
other words, she is signalling that if Rio2 complies with the law and successfully addresses all
the issues raised by the SEA in May, June and July last year the Committee, even though Rojas
may not want to she will be obliged to approve the project. Another defence to present and
upcoming critics, a Minister who has decided there’s no potential to “interpret” the law is a
rarity in LatAm.
Bottom line: Minister Maisa Rojas’s position in this interview is a clear indication of the shift in
policy we’ve seen since the Boric government’s wings were clipped by the populace, first in the
September Constitutional referendum and now in the new vote for the Constitutional committee
in which they totally lost control of the process to the right wing.
Peru: Copper production recovering
It will come as no surprise to those who have been watching closely, but after the disruptions in
Peru’s politics that started with the fall of Pedro Castillo and was followed by the widespread
social protests that closed down much of the country in January and parts of February, as
26

protests faded in March its mining production data is showing a clear uptick. We don’t have the
official Mining Ministry production data for March yet (they are rather slow to collate the
information) but on Friday in a separate government report, covering regional GDP growth and
economic activity, we learned that copper production for the month of March was up by 19.9%
compared to the same month of 2022 (18). We also learned that energy production and
consumption grew by 7.7% year-over-year, another sure sign that the country is back to
business.
Colombia: The draft environmental law project
There’s still no sign of the mining reform law project that Petro’s government said would be
presented to Congress by May this year (they have three days), but we now have news of the
draft environmental law project. This still doesn’t have a date fixed for presentation to
Congress, but according to those that have seen the 100 page draft now exists there’s bad
news for businesses dependent on environmental permits and suchlike. Yes, such as mining.
This article (19) outlines the contents as known unofficially and notes the three main bones of
contention (extracts translated):
The first is related to the centralization of power in environmental decisions. “The law
project makes a clear effort to centralize power (of decision) at the head of the Central
Government”.
(i.e. it takes permitting powers away from regions and will makes the national Environment
Ministry the place to go). We move to point two:
The second thorny issue is related to the supervisory roles. The draft makes the
Environment Ministry the umpire and superior authority that no only awards and
authorizations to companies, but also those of the National Authority of Environmental
Licences. That is to say, it would give the ministry, which today works as a regulatory
body, the task of permit execution and authorization.”
In other words, all major permits will have to be rubber-stamped by the Minister of the
Environment. We remind readers that her name is Susana Muhamad, she’s a close ally of
President Petro and she’s has a history of anti-mining activism and academic papers promoting
green sustainable alternatives to non-renewable natural resource industries. Now the third point
from the article.
And finally, there is the possibility that additional terms are created for the awarding of
permits and also applied to productive activities that currently do not need permits. As
one businessperson warned us, “We are facing over-regulation using judicial rulings on
projects that are already delayed, which will make it more difficult to obtain permits.
What’s more, the current public sector infrastructure for permit awards would not be
able to cope (with the extra work) in order to provide rapid expedition of permits.”
Another business leader agreed, saying “It would triple the time needed to obtain
permits and would open a Pandora’s Box for environmental permitting.”
Since Petro won the election last year we have warned of his anti-mining agenda and when
receiving push back from the industry, who said that as he did not control Congress he wouldn’t
be able to do much, we point out that all a government in power needed to do to stop mining
would be to make it near-impossible to get permits through its bureaucracy. This draft
environmental permitting project has “stealth anti-mining” as a sub-text and we haven’t even
seen the mining reform law project yet.
Market Watching
Deferred
One of these days I’ll have something to say.
Conclusion
IKN732 is done, we end with bullet points:
 Marimaca has “Will be a copper mine” written all over it, those economics and location
mean that the copper will not stay in the ground. And now with a compelling financial
27

case on our side, the task is to pick the moment to buy equity and make a profit.
What’s could possibly go wrong.
 The way things are going in Chile augurs well for Rio2 and its upcoming permit appeal.
The Boric government now understands what cruel financial reality means and as much
as I like those cuddly chinchillas, both the country and the company will want to build
that mine. Note that it will be right next door to Codelco’s next lithium project, almost
certain to be developed in JV with either Albemarle or SQM.
 Avoid Colombia.
I thank you in advance for any feedback. Our Top Pick stock is Minera Alamos (MAI.v). Flash
updates will be sent if required by events.
I wish you good trading fortune, ladies and gentlemen.
Best wishes, Mark
Footnotes, appendices, references, disclaimer
(1) https://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2023/05/schedule-for-week-of-may-28-2023.html
(2) https://www.fxstreet.com/news/us-core-pce-inflation-preview-preferred-federal-reserve-indicator-crucial-for-rate-hike-
expectations-202305260600
(3) https://www.cnbc.com/2023/05/26/inflation-rose-0point4percent-in-april-and-4point7percent-from-a-year-ago-
according-to-key-gauge-for-the-fed.html
(4) https://marimaca.com/marimaca-announces-updated-mineral-resource-estimate-for-the-marimaca-oxide-deposit/
(5) https://6ix.com/event/contango-ore-corporate-update-3/
(6) https://www.hellenicshippingnews.com/metals-sagging-demand-drags-copper-towards-6th-straight-weekly-loss/
(7) https://www.reuters.com/article/global-metals/metals-sagging-demand-drags-copper-toward-sixth-straight-weekly-
loss-idUSL1N37N0PW
(8) https://www.energyintel.com/00000188-57aa-d447-a38d-5feeafff0000?s=09
(10) https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2023/05/23/2674810/0/en/Wesdome-Drilling-Southeast-of-Kiena-
Mine-Identifies-Potential-Bulk-Tonnage-Underground-Target-Returning-2-3-G-T-Gold-Over-72-M-Core-Length.html
(11) https://www.marketscreener.com/quote/stock/MANITOU-GOLD-INC-49478374/news/Alamos-Gold-Announces-
Closing-of-Manitou-Gold-Acquisition-43939553/
(12) https://investingnews.com/nine-mile-brook-drill-program-update-identifies-vms-system-at-islands-target-area/
(13) https://www.primicias.ec/noticias/politica/definicion-candidatos-elecciones-presidente-asamblea/
(14) https://es.mongabay.com/2023/05/reformas-ley-minera-en-riesgo-de-ser-imputadas-mexico/
(15) https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/05/26/chile-lithium-batteries-mining-environment-climate-energy-transition/
(16) https://twitter.com/BlackAlex58/status/1661872097293991937
(17) https://twitter.com/BlackAlex58/status/1661872106068406273
(18) https://www.gob.pe/institucion/inei/informes-publicaciones/4263066-peru-panorama-economico-departamental-n-5-
mayo-2023
(19) https://www.semana.com/economia/articulo/preparan-una-polemica-reforma-a-la-institucionalidad-ambiental-de-
que-se-trata/202359/
Stocks To Follow Closed Positions 2022
Closed in 2022 date closed close price
Great Bear Res GBR.v Jan'22 C$15.83 26-Aug-20 C$28.58 80.5% Bought out by Kinross, print
Copper Mountain CMMC.to Jan'22 C$3.40 18-Jun-21 C$3.78 15.9% Sold 1/2 position in rebalance
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Copper Mountain CMMC.to Feb'22 C$3.40 18-Jun-21 C$3.70 8.8% Sold rest on FY22 guidance
Trilogy Metals TMQ Mar'22 U$1.84 15-Sep-19 U$1.04 -41.3% killed by US permit reversal
McEwen Mining MUX Apr'22 U$0.89 2-Jan-22 U$0.82 -7.9% No 2022 turnaround, cut loss
Abrasilver Res. ABRA.v May'22 C$0.42 24-Apr-22 C$0.33 -21.4% sold to reduce Ag exposure
Strategic Metals SMD.v May'22 C$0.42 31-Jan-21 C$0.30 -28.6% trade flatlined 1.5 years
Discovery Silver DSV.v Jun'22 C$1.77 24-Oct-21 C$1.39 -21.5% Cutting Ag exp.& raising cash
Element 29 ECU.v Jul'22 C$0.58 6-Mar-22 C$0.30 -48.3% sold to cut Cu exposure
Superior Gold SGI.v Oct'22 C$0.95 3-Apr-22 C$0.24 -74.7% Q3 prod fail was last straw
Goldshore Res GSHR.v Nov'22 C$0.18 23-Oct-22 C$0.34 88.9% Quick profit taken
Palamina Corp PA.v Dec'22 C$0.295 21-Nov-21 C$0.08 -72.9% Clear-out of underperformer
Pure Gold PGM.h Dec'22 C$0.14 26-Sep-22 C$0.015 -89.3% tiny trade on vh risk, went Ch11
Stocks To Follow Closed Positions 2021
Closed in 2021 closed close price
Fiore Gold F.v jan'21 C$0.98 21-May-20 C$1.17 19.4% closed as part of rebalance
Norsemont Min NOM.cse feb'21 C$1.55 6-Set-20 C$0.70 -54.8% Cut loser to reduce Au exp.
Element 29 Res ECU.v feb'21 C$0.49 7-Feb-21 C$0.54 10.2% Cut Peru exposure
Kuya Silver KUYA.cse feb'21 C$1.66 8-Nov-20 C$2.51 51.2% Cut Peru exposure
Pucara Gold TORO.v apr'21 C$0.65 4-Oct-20 C$0.26 -60.0% Cut loser, Peru risk call
Copper Mountain CMMC.to apr'21 C$1.40 22-Nov-20 C$4.18 198.6% tgt hit, profit taken
New Gold NGD may'21 U$0.76 9-Feb-20 U$2.14 181.6% Sold to buy AGC, nice win
Orezone Gold ORE.v jun'21 C$0.79 21-Jun-20 C$1.61 103.8% sold on pop, leaky boat
Wolfden Res. WLF.v sep'21 C$0.30 11-Apr-21 C$0.19 -36.7% Failed spec trade, cut loss
Cartier Res ECR.v sep'21 C$0.32 21-Mar-21 C$0.235 -26.6% Failed spec trade, cut loss
Amarillo Gold AGC.v sep'21 C$0.31 30-May-21 C$0.30 -3.2% Capex story changed: Out
Excelsior Mining MIN.to oct'21 C$0.93 10-Mar-19 C$0.53 -43.0% May return in 2022
Royal Road Min. RYR.v nov'21 C$0.155 17-Mar-19 C$0.275 77.4% Closed on Nica pol risk
Aurelius Min. AUL.v dec'21 C$0.75 28-Jun-20 0.24 -68.0% cut end 2021, failed trade
Argonaut Gold AR.to dec'21 C$2.95 25-Jun-21 C$2.15 -27.1% cut on capex blowout
Stocks To Follow Closed Positions 2020
Closed in 2020 closed close price
TMAC Resources TMR.to Jan'20 C$3.41 20-Dec-19 C$3.61 5.9% TLS flip play, sold new year
Regulus Res REG.v Jan'20 C$1.10 20-Dec-19 C$1.30 18.2% TLS flip play, profit taken
Bonterra Res BTR.v Jan'20 C$1.90 9-Dec-19 C$1.66 -12.6% TLS flip play, loss taken
McEwen Mining MUX Jan'20 U$1.12 2-Dec-19 U$1.18 5.4% TLS flip play, profit taken
Core Gold CGLD.v Jan'20 C$0.255 7-Apr-19 C$0.305 19.6% arb trade, profit taken
HudBay Min HBM Jan'20 U$3.56 9-Dec-19 U$3.36 -5.6% TLS flip play, loss taken
Midas Gold MAX.to Feb'20 C$0.71 5-Jan-20 C$0.57 -19.7% sm & silly trade
Warrior Gold WAR.v Feb'20 C$0.08 3-Aug-18 C$0.05 -31.3% clean out non-perf sm stocks
Contact Gold C.v Feb'20 C$0.40 19-Aug-18 C$0.18 -55.0% clean out non-perf sm stocks
Sandstorm Gold SAND Feb'20 U$3.73 17-Apr-16 U$7.21 93.3% Sold during port rebalance
NexGen Energy NXE Feb'20 U$1.20 2-Dec-19 U$1.06 -11.7% TLS flip play, loss taken
MAG Silver MAG Apr'20 U$8.95 1-Mar-20 U$10.07 12.5% Sold to cut silver exposure
Alexco Res AXU Apr'20 U$1.69 7-Sep-17 U$1.69 0.0% sold to close Ag exp. in FY20
Bonterra Res BTR.v Jun'20 C$1.62 2-Feb-20 C$1.10 -32.1% under-performer cash moved
Regulus Res REG.v Jun'20 C$0.64 6-Apr-15 C$0.79 23.4% moved $ TMQ/MIN & Au stocks
Great Panther GPR.to Aug'20 C$0.60 21-Jun-20 C$1.10 83.3% Profit taken, good trade
Jaguar Mining JAG.v Aug'20 C$0.42 21-Jun-20 C$0.65 54.8% Profit taken, good trade
Sandstorm Gold SAND Aug'20 U$7.76 10-May-20 U$9.37 20.7% Profit taken, good trade
Integra Resources ITR.v Aug'20 C$2.23 13-Aug-18 C$5.40 142.2% Profit taken, good trade
Wesdome Gold WDO.to Aug'20 C$2.37 14-Oct-17 C$14.82 525.3% last 1/2 of big win closed
29

INV Metals INV.to Sep'20 C$0.40 17-May-20 C$0.45 12.5% Cut all Ecuador exposure
Cartier Resources ECR.v Nov'20 C$0.155 3-Aug-18 C$0.25 67.7% Exact close price TBA
Tinka Res TK.v Dec'20 C$0.195 19-Apr-16 C$0.195 0.0% Closed on a round trip fail
2015 to 2019 annual closed positions in appendices below, 2009 to 2014 closed positions in editions IKN553 or earlier
Stocks To Follow Closed Positions 2019
Closed in 2019 closed close price
Atico Mining ATY.v jan'19 C$0.55 24-Jul-16 C$0.32 41.8% patience ran out, made room
Candente Copper DNT.to jan'19 C$0.075 3-Aug-18 C$0.05 -33.3% tiny trade, made room for new
B2Gold BTO.to feb'19 C$2.11 12-Sep-14 C$4.05 91.9% Took 1/2 profits, reduce size
Western Copper WRN.to mar'19 C$0.80 20-Jan-19 C$0.81 1.3% Spec trade that didn't work
B2Gold BTO.to mar'19 C$2.11 12-Sep-14 C$4.15 96.7% Took rest of profit.
GT Gold GTT.v mar'19 C$1.17 10-Oct-18 C$0.90 -23.1% Took loss. Story changed
NovaGold NG apr'19 U$3.84 13-Jan-19 U$4.15 -8.1% Short that didn't work, sm loss
Zinc One Z.v jun'19 C$0.47 14-Sep-17 C$0.025 -94.7% clearing out dead trade
Amarillo Gold AGC.v jun'19 C$0.24 22-Aug-18 C$0.20 -16.7% clearing out dead trade
New Gold NGD aug'19 U$1.44 31-Jul-19 U$1.23 14.6% ST short win thru Q2 earnings
IMPACT Silver IPT.v aug'19 C$0.39 21-Jul-19 C$0.46 18.0% took a quick profit
Fiore Gold F.v aug'19 C$0.34 26-May-19 C$0.56 64.7% Took profit, 2q19 avg
Chakana Copper PERU.v oct'19 C$0.84 22-Mar-18 C$0.16 -81.0% Exploreco trade fail. Want space
Wesdome Gold WDO.to oct'19 C$2.37 14-Oct-17 C$7.57 219.4% Sold half, profit taking
Superior Gold SGI.v oct'19 C$1.46 8-Apr-18 C$0.47 -67.8% Failed sm spec on Au. Moved on
Amerigo Res ARG.to nov'19 C$0.91 23-Sep-18 C$0.50 -45.1% worst trade of year, hefty loss
Guyana Goldfields GUY.to dec'19 C$0.94 14-Apr-19 C$0.56 -40.4% taking the loss, financials weak
Tethyan Res TETH.v dec'19 C$0.30 8-Sep-19 C$0.16 -46.7% tiny trade, word of probs in co
Stocks To Follow Closed Positions 2018
Closed in 2018 closed close price
Amarillo Gold AGC.v jan'18 C$0.38 24-Mar-17 C$0.31 -18.4% Cut away losing trade
Riverside Res RRI.v jan'18 C$0.39 27-Jun-16 C$0.31 -20.5% Cut away losing trade
Eros Res ERC.v jan'18 C$0.175 1-Mar-17 C$0.16 -8.6% CEO sudden exit, not good
Excellon Res EXN.to jan'18 C$1.54 9-Oct-16 C$1.66 7.8% 4q17 poor, one too many bad qtrs
Wesdome Gold WDO.to jan'18 C$1.68 15-Dec-17 C$2.06 22.6% Near-term trade block, took profit
Sabina G&S SBB.to apr'18 C$2.06 17-Dec-17 C$1.77 -14.1% Near-term trade, bad timing, small
B2Gold BTO.to May'18 C$2.11 12-Sep-14 C$3.67 73.9% sold 25% to reduce exposure
Lara Expl. LRA.v May'18 C$0.65 11-Feb-18 C$0.58 -13.8% Spec on Brazil didn't work
Solitario XPL June'18 U$0.72 19-Mar-17 U$0.41 -43.1% Failed trade, may return in 4q18
SolGold plc SOLG.to July'18 C$0.475 19-Nov-17 C$0.415 -12.6% cut, trade didn't perform
Pan American PAAS July'18 U$17.90 1-Jun-18 U$16.30 8.9% modest win on short position
NGEx Res NGQ.to Sep'18 C$1.01 22-Oct-17 C$1.00 -1.0% Closed to reduce Argentina exp
Sandstorm Gold SAND Oct'18 U$3.73 17-Apr-16 U$4.13 10.7% partial sale to raise cash for GTT
Aldebaran Res ALDE.v Nov'18 n/a n/a n/a n/a liquidate spin out of REG
Stocks To Follow Closed Positions 2017
Closed in 2017 closed close price
Continental Gold CNL.to Jan'17 C$2.68 22-May-16 C$4.17 55.6% trade closed, profit taken
Focus Ventures FCV.v Jan'17 C$0.23 1-Jul-12 C$0.05 -78.3% Give up, a disaster trade
Wesdome Gold WDO.to Feb'17 C$1.72 28-Aug-16 C$3.00 74.4% Target hit, sold, good trade
Belo Sun BSX.to Mar'17 C$0.90 30-Jan-17 C$0.90 0.0% failed near-term flip trade
Lara Expl. LRA.v Mar'17 C$1.15 8-Apr-12 C$1.05 -8.7% cut to make room for new trade
Rye Patch Gold RPM.v Apr'17 C$0.31 2-Sep-16 C$0.32 3.2% cut for doubts & new stock
Cordoba Min. CDB.v Jun'17 C$0.75 15-Sep-16 C$0.63 -16.0% closed
30

Constantine Metal CEM.v Aug'17 C$0.135 9-Apr-17 C$0.28 107.4% spec trade closed, good win
Red Eagle Min. R.to Sep'17 C$0.67 13-Dec-16 C$0.27 -59.7% IKN's biggest failure in years
Starcore Intl SAM.to Sep'17 C$0.61 10-Jan-15 C$0.31 -49.2% Patience ran out
B2Gold BTO.to Dec'17 C$2.11 12-Sep-14 C$3.39 60.7% sold small portion for liquidity
Stocks To Follow Closed Positions 2016
Closed in 2016 closed close price
Phoscan Chem FOS.to jan16 C$0.28 29-mar-15 C$0.265 -5.4% Buyout trade, bot but poor deal
True Gold TGM.v jan16 C$0.18 23-aug-15 C$0.25 38.9% okay trade, sold on pol risk
McEwen Mining MUX jan16 U$1.09 25-jan-15 U$1.20 10.1% sold due to lack of value
Lake Shore Gold LSG.to feb-16 C$1.10 07-apr-15 C$1.69 53.6% bot out, sold early in process
Atacama Pacific ATM.v feb-16 C$0.19 26-apr-15 C$0.40 110.5% sold for a double on big pop
New Gold NGD feb-16 U$2.06 24-jan-16 U$2.96 43.7% closed good near-term trade
Sandspring Res SSP.v mar-16 C$0.195 18-oct-15 C$0.32 64.1% Hit tgt, took profit
Teranga Gold TGZ.to mar-16 C$0.54 15-feb-15 C$0.60 11.1% disappointing trade
B2Gold BTG mar-16 U$0.85 13-jan-16 U$1.30 52.9% Separate trade on B2, hit tgt
Dalradian Res DNA.to mar-16 C$0.67 27-oct-13 C$1.00 49.3% Hit target, sold, good win
HudBay Min. HBM may-16 U$4.10 03-apr-16 U$4.36 -6.3% Short trade, poor timing
Nevada Sunrise NEV.v may-16 C$0.185 28-feb-16 C$0.23 24.3% V. small, no big deal either way
Richmont RIC jun-16 U$7.60 01-may-16 U$9.30 22.4% near-term trade, profit taken
INV Metals INV.to jul-16 C$0.25 03-apr-16 C$0.95 280.0% Trade closed on time
HudBay Min. HBM aug16 U$4.98 09-jun-16 U$4.80 3.6% short trade covered, no big deal
Miranda Gold MAD.v oct-16 C$0.125 03-jul-16 C$0.10 -20.0% tiny spec trade, didn't work
Avino G & S ASM nov-16 U$2.00 21-oct-16 U$1.40 -30.0% Abandon trade on bad bot deal
Stocks To Follow Closed Positions 2015
Closed in 2015 closed close price
Argonaut Gold AR.to jan'15 C$1.47 14-dec-14 C$2.53 72.1% Big gain small time, profit taken
Amerigo Res ARG.to jan'15 C$0.405 20-jul-14 C$0.285 -29.6% Given up on weak Cu prices
Reservoir Min. RMC.v jan'15 C$6.05 18-jun-14 C$4.12 -31.9% sold on Cu downturn
Coro Mining COP.to jan'15 C$0.075 26-jan-14 C$0.035 -53.3% sm, sold on Cu downturn
Fortuna Silver FSM mar'15 U$4.12 10-nov-14 U$3.75 9.0% Short used as hedge
GoldQuest Min. GQC.v mar'15 C$0.26 27-oct-13 C$0.085 -67.3% given up ghost
Rio Alto Mining RIO.to apr'15 C$2.30 07-apr-11 C$3.57 55.2% Top pick, bot out, big win
Timmins Gold TGD jun'15 U$0.60 19-apr-15 U$0.62 3.3% near-term trade, out of time
First Majestic AG jul'15 U$10.51 10-aug-14 U$4.55 56.7% horrible failed trade
NovaCopper NCQ.to jul'15 C$1.05 09-apr-14 C$0.50 -52.4% no more Cu exposure, sm sell
McEwen Mining MUX aug'15 U$0.695 21-jul-15 U$0.92 32.4% Closed nearterm flip for win
Midas Gold MAX.to sep'15 C$0.39 21-sep-15 C$0.35 -10.3% Sm. trade idea that didn't work
New Gold NGD oct'15 U$2.18 23-aug-15 U$3.05 39.9% trade closed, profit taken
Legend Gold LGN.v nov'15 C$0.085 01-mar-15 C$0.035 -58.8% tiny "land grab" idea, failed
Timmins Gold TGD nov'15 U$0.245 20-sep-15 U$0.15 -38.8% small near-term loser
Please note that due to space considerations closed positions 2009 to 2014 are now
available on request, or were published in any edition to IKN553 (end 2019).
Important Disclosure
The information and opinions contained within this report reflect the personal views of the author and therefore all
material within should not be construed as accurate or reliable or be utilized as advice for investment or business
purposes. Independent due diligence and discussions with ones own investment and business advisor is strongly
recommended. Accordingly, nothing in this report should be construed as offering a guarantee of the accuracy or
completeness of the information contained herein, as an offer or solicitation with respect to the purchase or sale of any
security or as an endorsement of any product or service. All opinions and estimates included in this report are subject to
change without notice. It is prohibited to copy or redistribute this report to any type of third party without the express
permission of the author.
31